


A Slowly Rotting Blossom

by babevolio



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, How Do I Tag, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Violence, i wanted to explore my interpretation of gabe, so this happened, the ocs are just background characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8804227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babevolio/pseuds/babevolio
Summary: A series of drabbles exploring Gabriel's life and his relationships.
First Part: Storm Chaser"You got that damn temper from your father."





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mess. let me know if other warnings or tags need to be added.

 

Gabriel doesn't remember much about his father beyond a warm smile seen through plexiglass, and soft spoken words to listen to his mama, gentle questions about how he was doing in preschool, all said through a heavy plastic telephone. A roaring engine and a cracked windshield. Screaming. A quiet sigh as he struggles to explain.

But he does remember the things his mama used to tell him, when he pestered her enough. When he did stupid things, or got into fights.

_ “You got that damn temper from your father.” _

She would say that while she stood with him outside the principal's office, helping press ice from the nurse to forming bruises and swollen knuckles.

He didn't really understand it. His anger came in waves, made him hear a soft  _ pinging _ until someone was pulling him off another kid. It came slow but went away fast, like a switch being flicked off.

His father's anger was different.

Gabriel remembers the angry man who had been screaming horrible words at him through the rolled up passenger window. He remembers the man’s face suddenly being pressed to the windshield, giving him a funny expression, a small crack in the glass spidering out from his sprawled body. The roaring engine as his father floored it, turning the wheel  _ just so _ , so the car would crash into a row of parked cars. His own screaming and scrabbling at his father's arm. The sudden brakes, the angry man sliding off the hood of the car onto the asphalt. His father's calm face as he shifts gears and reverses, then drives out of the large parking lot.

_ “It's like a hurricane, mijo. Everything around me is raging, but I'm at the eye of the storm. Nothing can reach me without being destroyed.” _

His father said this as they sat in the car afterwards, parked outside the house. He didn't really understand it, but his young mind could picture it. His dad, standing calmly while winds and debris raged around him.  _ Like a storm chaser on TV,  _ he thought.

_ “Well... nothing except you, mijito. I heard you yelling.” _

His father thanked him, as they got out of the car and headed into the house. He ruffled his hair and told him he had been so brave. Gabriel had felt pride at the time, but now he feels sick when he thinks of it.

He had thought his anger was different.

_ “One day you’re going to hit someone bigger and badder than you, and you're going to get your ass beat, Gabi. And it'll be no one's fault but your own, so you better not come crying to me when it happens.” _

His abuela was the one who had said this. It felt like she had slapped him. His abuela had always been on his side, supported him when he told his mama why he had been fighting. She’d apparently had enough, though.

So he learned to reshape his anger. Control it. Center himself, hold his tongue. Calm breaths, slow, deliberate movements. Focus. He visualized his anger as a storm around him, raging, while he remained calm at the center of it all.

He felt that rage less and less as he grew older, and it never really occurred to him what it had become similar to.

Then he heard it. While in that calm, centered, hyperfocused state, he heard it. A voice, calling to him through the roaring winds of rage, the destruction of his fists.

_ Jack's voice. _

It made everything stop. The wind was gone, the rage was gone. He was breathing quietly through his nose, hand curled in someone's shirt, he didn't know who, bloody fist cocked back for another punch.

He doesn't remember much after that, except for Jack's hands on him, moving him, guiding him. Muttering to him.

He thanked him. Jack brushed it off, said it's what friends were for. He didn't get it, just like Gabriel hadn't gotten it when he was younger.

But he understood, now.

  
( _He got his temper from his father.)_


End file.
